Recently, microstructures with micro or nano scales are used for a micro electro mechanical system (MEMS), a micro electronic device, a photo-electronic device, or the like. To design and manufacture such devices, it is required to identify the shapes of the microstructures used for the devices and to test the mechanical properties of the microstructures.
Generally, an atomic force microscope, i.e., AFM, was developed to measure the surface shape of a specimen piece of microstructures. As it has been realized that an AFM can be utilized for a high resolution test on a micro load and displacement of a microstructure, however, it additionally provides a function for testing mechanical properties, e.g., a nano-indentation test function.
As an AFM additionally provides a nano-indentation test, it can measure mechanical properties such as elastic modulus or hardness of a microscale specimen piece that was not measurable with any existing testing device.
However, most of conventional devices for scanning a nano structure using AFM probes merely have a single AFM probe with a fixed resolution, and thus, they have problems that they are incapable of measuring a nano structure with various resolutions and, as they use a single AFM probe, the AFM probe can be easily contaminated by impurities during operations such as rotating or rolling the nano structure to the right orientation.